Critics of UT’s Powers donated to two Transparency committee members

AUSTIN — Two members of the Texas House’s select committee investigating the activities of University of Texas regent Wallace Hall — Rep. Charles Perry and co-chair Rep. Dan Flynn — took campaign contributions from two major critics of UT-Austin president Bill Powers: Jeff Sandefer and Michael Quinn Sullivan‘s political action committee, Empower Texans PAC.

The examination of their campaign finance reports comes as the Select Committee on Transparency in State Operations prepares to hold their first meeting since receiving their special counsel’s draft report on Hall’s activities. That report alleges that Hall may have violated state and federal law in his bid to oust Powers from his position at UT.

Campaign finance records show that since March 2012, Rep. Perry, R-Lubbock, has received more than $20,000 in combined contributions and in-kind donations from the Empower Texans PAC, Jeff Sandefer and Accountability First PAC, which has received major donations from Sandefer and Hall.

Additionally, records show that he has received substantial support from Sullivan’s non-profit, Empower Texans, a 501(c)4, which is not required by federal law to disclose its donors. Empower Texans has not recently disclosed how much it spends to support specific candidates on its recent filings with the Texas Ethics Commission. Instead, the group simply lists bulk expenditures and the candidates those bulk expenditures go to support.

Empower Texans PAC and Sandefer also gave nearly $5,000 in contributions and in-kind support to Rep. Flynn, R-Canton, in 2012. However, Flynn got a similar sized amount of money from the other side — receiving $5,000 from Texas House Speaker Joe Straus’ Texas House Leadership Fund in 2012.

Sullivan led efforts to oust Straus, who ordered the select committee to investigate Hall, from his leadership role during the last two legislative sessions. And Hall and Sandefer gave a combined $300,000 to Accountability First PAC, which targeted Straus’ allies during the 2014 Republican primary.